


The Angel's Mark

by redpeanut



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Season/Series 04, TARDIS - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:50:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3167150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redpeanut/pseuds/redpeanut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Castiel wasn't an angel but The Angel, a Time Lord?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Angel's Mark

**Author's Note:**

> Rated "mature" for Dean's language :)

The chameleon circuit is broken. Again. 

The whole TARDIS is probably broken, at this point. Going to literal Hell tends to do this.

He doesn't know what he's going to be stuck with, not until he goes out of it. He sighs. Maybe going straight to hell wasn't his best idea, but he had to do it, he had to save the righteous man. Even if it meant breaking his space-time travelling machine in the process.

He climbs the stairs leading to his TARDIS's door, and finds himself getting out of the back of a light green mid-sixties Volkswagen van. Considering his TARDIS shapes herself regarding their surroundings -and his liking for the color green-, this places them anywhere on earth, regular timeline, anytime after 1965. In a green van.

"Could you be any less specific?” He sighs again. “Well, it could have been worse... I guess," he says, slowly eyeing her new form, "though I liked you better as a Smart, it was funnier."

September 18th started great but turned sour once he decided it was the day he was going to save Dean Winchester. His self-indulged rescue mission to Hell didn't go as planned: he had to step out of his TARDIS to get a hold on Dean, which caused him to almost fall in the depths of hell himself. He ended up with both of his hands on the man's shoulders, probably leaving there a mark of some kind, hanging out of the TARDIS by his feet. Which is, strangely enough, not the most bizarre thing that ever happened to him.

Since that day, he tried to get in touch with Dean a couple of times, but never managed to do so. Who knew the side effects of a Time Lord going to Hell included getting a different leveled-voice that can break glass and an appearance that can burn other people's eyes?

After going around it a few times to check if he didn’t break a tire on top of it all, he goes back inside his TARDIS and quickly checks the time on the multi-dimensional clock he put on the ceiling. September 20th, 2008. It took him fifty hours in Earth's time, give or take, to become bearable to mankind again.

However, he has been called upon, and heard the men's prayers. Somehow, it made him go back to his normal state. Whatever 'normal' means for him. His voice didn't break any glass lately, so that's a good sign. 

He comes closer to the warehouse in which he has been summoned by Dean and an older man. His best guess is that Dean doesn't remember him nor how he was pulled out of hell, so he'll need to make the first impression count.

He checks his appearance one last time under the faint light of the thin moon, sonic blade discretely tucked in his trench coat's interior pocket. As he arrives in front of it, he realizes that maybe he isn't completely back to normal as a little storm hits the warehouse, opening the wooden doors as he arrives in front of it. He silently thanks the storm for that, thinking of his sonic blade's incapacity on wood.

The first things he sees are sigils, all over the place, probably put there to protect the men against demons and other evil forces. He smiles a little, thinking at how ineffective this is on a Time Lord. He comes in slowly, unpurposedly making the light bulbs over his head explode as he walks towards the men, who start to shoot him. He expected it, but he's still slightly upset when he realizes Dean doesn't recognize him. He gets closer to the man he saved, who picks a knife on the table he was sitting on a minute ago.

"Who are you?" Dean says, ready to stab him whilst trying to determine how ineffective it might be.

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition," he answers, unsure how else he might call the rescue.

"Yeah, thanks for that" Dean says, just before plunging the knife in him. Which is, of course, completely useless. He looks at Dean, unable to hide a little smile at the ineffectiveness, then looks down at the blade, not even slightly moved he just got stabbed by the man he saved, and takes the blade out of his chest.

"Luckily for you, I have two hearts and stunning healing abilities." He says while dropping the blade on the floor. He sees the confusion on Dean's face and doesn't miss the look he gives to the older man, who attacks him from behind, which he easily counters. He touches the older man's forehead with his fingertips, pulling him in a deep sleep on the less-than-comfortable floor. He looks at him, wondering why humans' first reaction towards the unknown is to attack and try to kill it. He then turns to the younger man.

"We need to talk, Dean." He eyes the man on the floor before adding "alone," as Dean checks the other man's pulse. "Your friend's alive," he says moments later, not looking at any of them as he flips a book's pages, glad his own eyes didn't suffer from his trip to Hell.

"Who are you?" Dean says angrily.

"The Angel."

"Say what now?" Dean sounds as if he just heard all humans beings are now required to eat Brussels sprouts at each meal. 

"My name is The Angel, I am a Time Lord." He says calmly, finally looking up from his book.

"Get the hell outta here, there's no such thing." Dean says while getting up, even angrier than before.

"This is your problem, Dean. You don't believe in anything else than what you have been taught," The Angel says calmly. He raises a hand next to his head, barely moves his fingers, and makes the warehouse's roof shatter as a faint storm is heard, a combination of his Time Lord powers and residues from Hell. "What do you think I am, then? Come on Dean, there's no such thing as Angels, even you know that."

"Then why is it your name?" Dean says, completely oblivious to everything.

"I chose it. I like it. I try to help other beings whenever I can, and on a few occasions, I have been told that I must be an Angel, so I named myself The Angel. Will that be sufficient or do you need my birth certificate too?" The Angel is getting slightly upset now.

Dean breathes slowly before saying "some angel you are. You burned that poor woman's eyes."

The Angel quickly shifts from upset dragon to sad puppy, "I told her not to peek on me just after a trip to Hell. Apparently, seeing me can be overwhelming to humans for some time, as well as hearing me. But you already knew that," looking straight in those extremely green eyes.

"You mean the gas station and the motel? That was you talking?" Dean asks, incredulous, as The Angel nods. "Believe me, I know how some sounds on some occasions can affect humans, but buddy, next time, lower the volume," Dean says with a grin, more to himself than anyone else, completely oblivious to the fact that The Angel doesn't have any idea of what he's talking about.

"That was my mistake. No one knew the side effects of a trip to Hell on a Time Lord. I thought some people, special people, could see me without being hurt. I thought you would be one of them, since you were in Hell yourself and I’m the one who brought you back. I was wrong," The Angel says apologetically.

Dean thinks for a few seconds, then asks "and that's the look you got from there, huh? Hell of a tax accountant. If you're a Time Emperor or something, why do you look so human?"

"Looking like a human and being one are not the same things, Dean. Human shape is the usual form in which my people, the Time Lords live. When we die, we usually regenerate into another body, faces we came across at some point in our lives. It's actually possible to choose. I like this one, it's comfortable. It's actually my second time in it." The Angel says, looking at his body and moving his trench coat a little, as to make Dean approve of his choice.

"So you just stole some poor bastard's identity and decided to make it your own? That's some high-leveled identity theft, and I know what I'm talking 'bout," Dean says.

"He's a devout man, he actually prayed to Angels for this, and I heard him. I was the only one to," The Angel says with the tinniest of smiles, thinking of how the man prayed for travel and how his look-alike is now going all over time and space.

"Look, pal, I'm not buying what you're selling. So who are you, really?"

The Angel squints and tilts his head. “I told you," he says, wondering if his voice was properly heard by the man.

"Right. And why would 'The Angel' rescue me from hell?" Dean says, oblivious to his own value.

"Good things do happen, Dean," he says, walking closer as he talks, completely unaware of humans concepts such as personal space.

"Not in my experience," Dean says, thinking in the blink of an eye of all the people he's already lost, thinking of all the things he did.

“What’s the matter?" The Angel asks, tilting his head once again. "You don't think you deserve to be saved?” What started as a question ends up being a statement as he realizes how little Dean thinks of himself.

“Why d'you do it?”

“Because you matter, Dean. You are important. Everyone is, on their own specific way. The things you have yet to do need to happen, for the greater good of the human kind," he says, very matter-of-factly, as if he just told the weather forecast for the week to come.

The man may not realize nor believe it, but as a Time Lord, he saw all the important things Dean Winchester is going to be involved in, he saw is death isn’t supposed to happen before a few more years, and even then it’s… complicated. One thing is sure though, it’s that Dean needed to be saved today, it’ll be written in textbooks, and the old Time Lord was a part of it.

He can now go and scream it to the world: Dean Winchester is saved.

*

The Angel then goes back to his TARDIS, only realizing once inside that maybe the side effects came from her. He realizes his suspicions are true as he finds himself temporarily unable to get out. He is only able to contact Dean a few days later via the man's dream. Resting by the kitchen counter, he waits for Dean to come to him.

"Excellent job with the witnesses," The Angel says as a greeting.

"You were hip to all this?" Dean's greetings are just as heart-warming.

"I was uh... made aware," he says apologetically, not specifying his TARDIS unwillingly kept him away from the man while allowing him to see what happened.

"Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance. You know, I almost got my heart ripped out of my chest," Dean says, pointing to his heart, seemingly angry every time he talks to the Time Lord.

"But you didn't," comes the response, as a way of justifying his lack of help.

"I thought you named yourself Angel 'cause you're supposed to be a guardian, all nice and helpful -- you know, Mother Teresa. Not a dick."

"First of all, read the Bible. Angels are primarily warriors of God. And I... I'm a soldier."

"Yeah? Then, why didn't you fight?" Dean says, defying.

"I'm not here to perch on your shoulder. I had larger concerns," The Angel says, thinking of his still unfixed TARDIS, his everlasting quest to find others of his kind, as well as stopping seals from being broken on his own. Damn, he's quite busy these days, without having to babysit humans on top of it all.

"Concerns? There were people getting torn to shreds down here!" Deans says angrily, almost whispering. "What the hell are you waiting for, huh? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The freaking apocalypse? At what point will you prove your name fits you, 'Angel'?"

"Time Lord work..." He starts, before being interrupted by Dean.

"If you say 'mysterious ways,' so help me, I will kick your ass," Dean says as The Angel raises his hands in surrender. It takes Dean a few seconds to realize something. "So, Bobby was right... about the witnesses. This is some kind of a... sign of the apocalypse," he says, coming closer to the kitchen counter and resting on it too, next to the Time Lord.

"That's why I'm here," he says, thinking 'that and occasionally saving you'. "Big things afoot."

"Do I wanna know what kind of things?" Dean says, doubting he even wants to see a cute drawing about it the moment the words leave his mouth.

The Angel slightly tilts his head to the side, wondering how to make it seem less apocalyptic than it actually is. "I sincerely doubt it, but you need to know. The Rising of the Witnesses is one of the 66 seals."

"Okay. I'm guessing that's not a show at SeaWorld," Dean says, his attempt at lightening the mood going unnoticed by the Time Lord.

The Angel explains the whole apocalypse-is-coming-right-at-you deal to Dean, complete with demon-posing-as-fallen-angel Lucifer, feeling like he's explaining differential equations to a three year old. When Dean questions his dedication to saving the human race once more –more precisely, saving him and the people he cares for-, the Time Lord finds no other way to make himself clear than by going to the edge of threatening the man.

"I tried. And there are other battles, other seals. Some we'll win, some we'll lose. This one we lost," he says, as Dean breathes mockingly, which only manages to get to the nerves of The Angel. "While I fight your battles, I also try to find others of my kind. You think extra-terrestrial beings have nothing better to do than just follow you around? There's a bigger picture here. You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell. I can throw you back in," he says, slowly, moving closer to Dean and making sure his point of view is now clearly understood.

If The Angel notices the man's heart beat speed up as he approaches him, he either doesn't care or thinks he's getting afraid.

The Angel vanishes, leaving Dean alone in the dream-kitchen. Judging by the look on Dean's face, he probably finally realizes that The Angel is not just a dorky guy in a trench coat, but an alien from another dimension, who lives by other rules, has his own unique abilities, and most of all who should by feared by humans and demons alike.

*

The Angel next sees Dean as the man is asleep. He must have missed frivolous humans concepts such as 'time', because he wanted to appear around noon. It's not his fault if the men -Dean and what must be his brother- keep moving from crappy to crappier motel, with the occasional stop at Bobby's -whom he guesses is the old man from the warehouse-, forcing him to follow around, a few hours late, like a dog from outer space on a virtual leash.

He sits slowly on the edge of the bed, wondering for how long Dean will be asleep, if he should wake him up, and why do humans even sleep when it makes them all grumpy and their hair all messy. He senses more than he sees the man tense up, rapidly awake.

"Hello Dean. What were you dreaming about?" he says, turning his head to face the man as he talks. If Dean wasn't crept out solely by seeing him on his bed, he is now as the only thing he can associate The Angel with is Chucky, that horrible, horrible, doll.

The man-looking alien tells the man to 'stop it', then slightly touches Dean's forehead, sending him about 35 years back in time. At least he hopes so, his abilities may still be altered by his city trip in Hell. A thought quickly pops to his mind: maybe he should have been more specific about what Dean has to stop.

He goes back to his TARDIS, whom he parked on the motel parking, opens the back doors and starts going down the stairs of the bunker. He walks through the main room, going straight for the space-time console in the shape of a map of the world, reflecting what the world he's currently on looks like. This one is a majority of water and trees, inhabited by roughly seven billion of Dean-like thingies, with some differences. He should start calling them by the name they gave themselves, 'humans'.

He enters the coordinates of the place and time where he sent Dean, pulls down the levee and waits for the usual noise his TARDIS makes with her brakes on.

Except he doesn't hear it. Well, he only hears the noise once, as opposed to multiple times as usual. He drags the biggest of the three screens on top of the console in front on his face, and sees that not only didn't he go to where he sent the man, but he went forward in time -only for about an hour, but still.

He wonders what the best way to contact Dean might be, considering he can only go forth in time. He settles for sending a holographic image of himself back in time. And space. To be specific: Lawrence, Kansas, May 30th, 1973.

Using the medium-sized screen, he reached for a loop video of Dean, a mere hour after he arrived there, delighted to see that the man arrived where and when he planned him to. He seems to be following John Winchester, which can only be either very good or very bad news. He projects himself just around a corner, successfully stopping the man's stalking as well as managing to get close enough to make sure he was seen and heard properly -which, in human terms, means way too close.

After quickly stating that yes, this is reality and no, he won't change the course of time if he kills a bee -but why would anyone hurt such lovely creatures?-, he realizes that he haven't explained everything to Dean about what he is.

"I don't think I've explained to you what Time Lord are, I thought the name made it obvious. I am what you might call an 'alien', I come from the planet Enoch, and I can bend time and space. Which is how I sent you here. However, I am currently not able to go back in time myself, so you can consider what you are seeing right now as being an 'astral projection' of my being."

Dean looks at him with eyes so big he could be mistaken for a Disney princess. "So you can bend time and space huh? Well bend it back, or at least tell me what the hell I'm doing here!" Dean says.

"I told you. You have to stop it", comes the answer, interrupted by a car horn from behind Dean, who looks in the general direction of the noise, unaware that he is the one responsible for breaking the connection between him and The Angel.

Which is why, when he turns back to face the Time Lord and doesn't see him, his only reaction is to become -once again- angry at him, yelling at someone who isn't there in a crowded street, drawing to him weird looks from strangers from the past.

The Angel, alone in his TARDIS, talks to himself too. "Well done, Dean. Now I can't go back there before 24 hours pass for you, you're on your own. Focus. You have a cruel lack of focus," he says, looking at his TARDIS's ceiling. He then goes back to look at the screen, trying to find another moment to reach Dean.

He finds Dean again the following day in the man's perspective, when he's in his stolen car. He doesn't have a lot of talking to do now that Dean understands why he’s there and then. He has to make sure the man understands his only two options are letting things happen the way they're supposed to, meaning let his mother die and his father die inside; or saving them and letting all the people they saved die. He might seem cruel to Dean, but it is necessary for the man to understand something, and it was the only way he would make his point clear.

He goes back to his TARDIS and the screen, finds the night of the man's third day in the past. He programmed him for three days there, he just wants to alert the man. He arrives, touches Dean's shoulder, right next to where he left a palm-shaped mark, to make him know his time is up and brings him back to 2008, next to him, in the motel room Dean just left, like no time has passed. Or, close to no time, since The Angel could only go forth in time.

The man states that he couldn't stop any of it, which is the point The Angel wanted to make. He explains, perched on the edge of Dean's temporary bed, that his mother's death in the May 2nd 1983 is a fixed point in time, it couldn't have been stopped, and nothing that anyone does before or after that will change the fact that this needs to happen, no matter how hurtful it might be for the Winchester brothers.

Speaking of which, he points the man to the empty bed next to Dean's, making him aware of his brother's absence and telling him where he can be found, telling Dean to 'stop it' once again, without being any more specific, once again.

He goes back to his TARDIS and heads straight for the kitchen. "What do you think, Charlie? Was there any other way to make him understand?" he asks her, his emotions -which he doesn’t understand what they are yet- somewhere between troubled, annoyed, and slightly upset. 

He closes his eyes and waits for the familiar noise of a spoon on the wooden table to open his eyes. The answer is in front of him in the form of alphabet letters in tomato soup, as always: 'YOU DID RIGHT, CAS'. He mumbles an unconvinced thanks before eating the soup with a slice of bread topped with chocolate spread. At least his meal is comforting. And delicious.


End file.
